Sleeptalking
by DangerousDreams
Summary: By far my worst. Started out about movies. Then went spiraling beyond my control.


A/N: Just be warned, I wrote this very late at night when I was very tired.

"What's that?" Rukia's voice cut through Ichigo's headphones, unfortunately for him. _Maybe if I ignore it, it'll go away_, he thought, employing one of the most basic technique of little kid logic.

_Sigh_. "ICHIGO!" she yelled, and yanked on his sleeve a bit more violently than was strictly necessary. "What is that?"

"Damn, Rukia, you're gonna tear my shirt!" he growled, and then looked where she was pointing. "It's a theatre, midget!"

"Like…plays?" she asked.

"No, like movies," he replied.

"Can we go see a play?" she asked, deciding to ignore his previous statement due to the fact that she had no idea what a "movie" was.

"I told you it's _movies_. You know, like plays mixed with TV."

"TV?" She thought of the magic box in Ichigo's living room. "Hm… Can we see one?"

"No, I'm not rich you know. Especially not since you came here." Even as he spoke, though, he knew that it was useless. This was Rukia, after all.

"Aw, come on, please?" she asked sweetly.

"No," he said bluntly.

Her eyes narrowed, and out came the gremlin. "If we don't, I'll…I'll…tell everyone what you say in your sleep!"

His eyes widened, alarmed. "Wha…What? I sleeptalk? What do I say?"

She grinned mischievously, knowing she had struck a nerve. "That's for me to know and you to find out."

He sighed. He knew when he was beat. "Will you tell me if we go see a movie?"

"Okay. But we have to go see it now, because there aren't any Hollows around."

"What? No way!"

"Oh. What a shame. But oh well, I'm sure that Tatsuki-san and Chad-san and Orihime-chan and Ishida-san and especially Renji-kun would LOVE to know what you say in your sleep."

He glared at the petite shinigami. "FINE."

"Speaking of sleeptalking, Ichigo," she said as she skipped down the road ahead of him. "I had NO idea you thought that about me."

He stopped dead in his tracks. Did he really sleeptalk? And what did he SAY? And where did she learn to blackmail people like that?

***

"Let's watch…THAT one!" she said cheerfully, pointing to a horror-supernatural film poster.

"No way! You'll be scared to death." Then he realized the irony of what he had just said. "I mean, you won't be able to sleep, and then you'll wake me up because you can't STAND to let me be freakin happy while you're not, right?"

"I won't wake you up," she said innocently. "If you sleep, I'll hear you talk in your sleep."

"You're not convincing me you know."

"Come on, Ichigo, I'll be fine. I think it's you that's scared."

"No way I'm falling for that trick."

"Fine." She walked over to the ticket counter and spoke to the girl behind the glass. "Excuse me ma'am, we'd like two tickets to the My Little Pony movie. You know," she stage whispered, loud enough for Ichigo to hear, "he gets kind of scared in the big-kid movies."

"That's it, you bitch!" he snarled, and turned to the salesgirl. "Sorry about my _friend_. We'd like two tickets to the horror movie."

"Here you are, sir."

He accepted the tickets, and they walked into the theatre.

The movie started out not very scary, but by the time they were ten minutes into it, Rukia was so scared she had an iron grip on Ichigo's arm, and her eyes were so big he thought they'd fall out. Along with his arm, which was now going numb.

"Who's not scared?" he whispered, and she hissed back, "Shut up, you jerk. I'm not scared. You are." Two seconds later, a monster popped up on the screen. She shrieked, along with the rest of the females in the audience, and jumped so high she almost ended up in his lap. He smirked at her, then realized she was actually _trembling_. Or just twitching a lot. Which wouldn't surprise him. At all.

"Hey, you okay?"

"I'm. Fine." She jumped again as another monster popped up.

"Just don't look at the screen if you're that scared," he said, from experience with two younger sisters. She shook her head stubbornly, but as a third monster appeared, she screamed again and buried her face in his chest, too scared to look anymore. She still had a death grip on his arm.

By the time they left the theatre, his arm was completely numb. "That movie scared the hell out of you," he said.

"Did not!" She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Okay," he said. He knew it was better to let her have her way. But he slowly starting falling behind her, a bit at a time, and halfway home, he jumped out at her and shouted, "Boo!"

She screamed, loudly, way loudly, and then punched him on the arm several times, hard, way hard. "You…you…jerk!" she said, apparently not being able to find a sufficiently mean enough name to call him.

"Okay," he laughed. "Sorry, sorry. But admit it. You were scared."

She glared at him. "Maybe. A little.'

They walked home side by side, her a bit angry, him a bit smug.

***

She curled up under her blankets and tried her best to get to sleep, but she couldn't stop thinking of the monsters bursting through windows and eating people. After all, Ichigo's bed was next to the window.

Ichigo was in bed, too, and couldn't sleep either, but for a very different reason. He didn't want to fall to sleep, lest he say things in his sleep that he didn't want anyone, least of all her, to hear. After all, hadn't she implied that what he said was about her anyway? He shuddered.

Suddenly the closet door slid open, and Rukia climbed out quietly, clearly thinking he was asleep. He closed his eyes and feigned sleep, curious to what she was doing. She walked to his bed and slowly climbed on, reaching for the window. Suddenly his eyes watered uncontrollably. _Shitshitshit_, he thought.

_AT-CHOO!_

"Eep!" she fell, sprawled across his legs, and stared up at him. His amber eyes stared back, equally startled, all pretense of sleep gone.

"What are you doing?" she asked curiously.

"What?! I should be asking YOU that same exact thing! What are you doing crawling onto my bed in the middle of the night, midget?" he hissed, trying to keep his voice down.

"I was closing the window!" she hissed back indignantly.

"…Why?" he asked, completely nonplussed.

"So the monsters couldn't get in," she said, as if that should be obvious.

"Oh, of course." He sighed, and silence fell. He didn't mention the fact that she was still lying across _his_ legs, on _his_ bed, keeping _him_ from falling asleep very comfortably. Oh well. They both became lost in their own thoughts, soon not even noticing that anything was out of the ordinary.

Rukia smiled when she realized Ichigo was asleep. And not talking. Just like every other night.

A/N: For some reason, I made a LOT of death jokes in this one. What does that tell you about me?

All right, I warned you it was weird. This makes sense to me, but I'm not sure about you actually sane people, so let me explain. Basically, he doesn't sleeptalk at all [though I do… That may be where I got the idea, subconsciously. Or not.] and she knows that, but she just wants to go see this fascinating play-TV cross thing, and she felt like making him worried for no reason. She can totally get in people's heads. That's so part of her charm.


End file.
